electric angel /design for life

we’re on holiday…

…until tuesday 4th march. i’ll be at yorkshire coast college in the morning of the 4th leading a workshop following on from the original lecture – i’m looking forward to seeing what ideas the brief has prompted.

coastal connections

flyer for a north yorkshire creative industries network event hosted by create. the event takes place in scarborough on 12 march in scarborough and looks like the sort of day creative practitioners won’t want to miss [despite the fact that i've been invited to lead one of the workshops...]

the event is aimed at artists and designers and will explore some of the themes that cross over between the two disciplines, particularly as ‘crossing over’ is something that both keynote speakers have done. trudi entwistle is a site-specific artist with comissions across the globe who began her career as a landscape designer, andii edwards is a graphic designer who still gets chance to pursue the sort of work he first started to do on a fine art degree.

it’ll be great to catch up with trudi as we know each other from leeds metropolitan university days [me designing, her teaching] and worked together on a book prototype that combined photos and thoughts on her work with typography. local residents might remember trudi from when she transformed the road outside the royal hotel into a grassed area with emerging triangular turfed boxes.

the flyer arrives folded to about the size of a CD case and opens up, first to reveal the introduction and programme and then to A3 to reveal the rest of the information. printed on 100% recycled paper which is what we’re recommending to all our clients these days – the quality is great. credit to scarborough-based printers adverset for a nice job on this. copywriting by us. designers and artist in north yorks should find this dropping on their doormats in the next few days, or you can download a pdf version at: www.create.uk.net/discussions.php – go to the ‘useful documents’ section. oh yeah – my workshop is titled ‘do designers have a soul?’ and will develop some of the ethics stuff i’ve been exploring with students recently.

early application scheme

a quick one pulled out of the archives – early application scheme leaflet for leeds metropolitan university. aimed at a 16+ market and so deliberately using bright photography, a little grunge type and graphic devices to suggest momentum.

what we’re watching [1]

jonathan meades : magnetic north. tv rarely produces anything as stimulating as a jonathan meades documentary. any of them. last night’s giddy ride in search of ‘north’ ranged from inebriation as essential climate coping mechanism to the secularisation of religion embodied by reformation church-stripping via dogging as metaphor for heaven and hell. wonderful. but then anything that debunks the myth of ’south’ is good by me.

one gripe though – in the programme southwold was quoted as the first english seaside resort. tut-tut, mr meades. that accolade does belongs to somewhere beginning with an ’s’, but it’s definitely in the north of england.

wisdom for women in youth work

…that’s the description for a website we produced towards the end of last year for launch at the national youthwork conference. the aim of the site is to provide a female voice and perspective in a male-dominated profession.

we were asked to design a logo, website and promo postcards for the newly-formed sophia network. the site was a collaboration with ross kendall using open source technology, hot on the heels of the renaissance friends site. there’s a lot going on in the website and ross did a sterling job to meet a rather tight deadline.

the site has two levels of engagement – casual visitors will see the public face which includes a blog, an editorial, events listing and a taste of the features on offer to members. when you sign in as a member there’s a more in-depth blog, an editorial written specifically for members, resources for download and directories of members and female speakers. this enables the site’s owners to tailor the content to two specific audiences as well as provide an incentive for females in youthwork to join up and benefit from being able to interact online in a safe space. the site is powered by a content management system so the owners have complete facilities to update content and manage the membership details.

for the logo design we did some research into ’sophia’ – the greek word for wisdom and in jewish scripture thought to represent the female part of god, something that reaches into the roman catholic tradition of referring to mary, the mother of christ as ’seat of divine wisdom’. we discovered that in the latin church sophia is usually pictured crowned and in the orthodox church with red skin. thus the crown features in the logo and the gold and red provided a starting point for the website’s colourscheme.

another edge

continuation of the ‘on the edge’ publicity [more here] in the form of A0 posters at various locations around the scarborough campus of the university of hull. local surfer oli banks’ film, 900 miles, shows tonight as part of the spring 08 season. i’m estimating that tonight’s creative coast [the 5 minute pitch - at which rebecca will be pitching on behalf of electric angel] will finish in time for a dash up the hill to the uni to catch the movie.

and then there were four…

…for a while, at least. that’s because from today we’re being joined by hannah who’s studying design at the university of hull school of arts and new media. she’ll be in the studio one day a week on a work placement. so if you ring and a new voice answers the phone – that’s who you’re talking to. welcome hannah!

cream of the north

had a name-check in friday’s edition of the times. as well as quoting me they unearthed another scarborough riley with a far finer pedigee – riley’s dairy. apparently there are loads of their earthenware jars buried under the football ground. given that it’s likely to be demolished for new housing i might have chance at getting hold of one when they dig it up. anyhows, the article mentioned the creative migration to this part of the the uk and said what glorious place it is to live. but you already knew that didn’t you?

mapping south cliff

although there’s no doubt that scarborough is developing a more continental culture, it’s not often we’re to be found drinking wine at 10am overlooking the sea. at least not on a work day in february. but this morning our excuse was the official unveiling of a map of south cliff gardens on the esplanade – a joint project between scarborough civic society and scarborough borough council. [given the chilly morning it was mulled wine].

this has been a genuine collaboration – the original map was drawn by architect richard flowitt of the civic society, james did the digital colouring and labels and i did some work on the layout and typography. the map was also printed in last month’s renaissance news and we’ve received some lovely comments from people about it. thanks all. it has been commissioned to celebrate 50 years of the gardens coming under the management of the council and coincides with the restoration of the 13 shelters dotted across the south cliff.

the south cliff gardens are one of the legacies of scarborough’s victorian heyday and sometimes tend to get forgotten or ignored by visitors and residents alike which is a shame because there few more pleasant activities than a stroll through the gardens looking out to sea and spotting squirrels and birds – i’ve even seen wild deer there. hopefully a few more people will now be tempted in as a result of the map. it’s situated opposite the crown spa hotel, printed copies can be obtained from the renaissance office: 01723 341346.

the venue

i promised this last week but you know how it is, deadlines, deadlines deadlines…

anyhows – back to digital scarborough 06. we were unable to find a large enough venue for hexstatic on the date we wanted, so decided to create our own. the old train sheds sit next to scarborough station and are usually put to use as a car park. i got the credit for coming up with the idea of using it as a venue, but i seem to think that nick at scarborough’s future had unbeknown planted the seed of the idea a few weeks earlier when talking about unused public spaces in town. pete massey deserves every bit of the credit for making it happen.

it was probably the hardest dancefloor i’ve been on (solid concrete) but the graffiti (now painted over) added to the atmosphere plus the rather surreal addition of deckchairs. who’d have realised what we’d started – a few months later the university put it to use for a gig headlined by the gallows and that prompted ideas of how the shed might be turned into a custom arts and music venue with recording studios. that probably won’t happen in this particular location but keep in mind that at the moment, scarborough is the kind of place where ideas take flight…

[pics: top-the venue; middle-hexstatic in action; below-dj's kista and tooley]

‘and what of ds08?’ i hear you cry. true to form there’s been slight problem with venue… details of where and when very soon.